Computation structures

Information about INFO0012-2 and INFO0012-3 courses

General information

Course description

The notes, references and material covered by the theoretical lessons can be found on Prof. Wolper's pages.

Schedule

The course takes place every Tuesday during the first quarter at the Montefiore Institute (B28), room R3. The theoretical lessons are programmed from 14:00 to 16:00 and the practical sessions from 16:00 to 18:00.

The students are advised to come with their theoretical lessons material at each practice sessions.

Examination

Written exam: Open book for the material covered in the four first lectures (up to and including virtual memory), and closed book for the rest of the material covered.

Two programming assignments: These have to be completed during the course period (more details in due time).

Project 2

Test your configuration file with CheckFile

The following .jar file is a program enabling you to test your level configuration files.

Simply run the following command java -jar CheckFile.jar and open your configuration file using the ... button.
If your file is valid, the configuration will be rendered below. Otherwise, the cause of the error will be described in the Info field.

A minimal code editor with error highlighting (when the code is assembled).

The simulator comes as a .jar package you can run in several ways:

On modern systems with UI (Windows,...), you can simply double-click on the file.

If you prefer using a console, you can run: java -jar bsim-vram.jar.

Because the built-in code editor is minimal, I don't recommend using it for developing programs.
For instance, there is no "Undo" nor "Redo" option, so you might lose some work by performing some non-deliberate deletions.
It is better to first write your code in another text editor such as NotePad++ or Sublime Text (β-assembly syntax highlighting and snippets, check this forum for installation location), and then load it into the simulator for testing.

Loading and launching code

To execute some code you have written in the simulator, you first have to load this piece of code in the editor. This can be done by clicking on in the upper toolbar and walking through your filesystem for getting the .asm file.

When your code is ready to be executed, the execution can be triggered by clicking on in the upper toolbar. If your code does not contain any syntax error, you will be redirected to the execution window. Otherwise, the syntax error will be described in the bottom of the editor window.

Breakpoints

You can indicate to the β-machine you want to pause the execution of your code at a specific instruction by writing the keyword .breakpoint: